What's Hot: Super portable, good volume and works with all devices with a 3.5mm audio jack.

What's Not: Has some audio distortions with certain devices.

Small portable media speakers have become popular as they are easy to carry and can instantly give more volume and depth to music or movie audio when you play them on your smartphone or tablet. Scosche boomCAN portable Media Speaker comes in a very small size yet provides good volume and adds more depth to the device audio. The round speakers comes four colors currently: black, silver, blue and read.

Design

The Scosche boomCAN speaker looks like a shrank-down version of a can speaker. Measuring 2.5 inches tall and 2 inches wide, the round speaker is extremely small and portable. The Scosche boomCAN speaker has a simple design that includes a speaker on top that lets out audio, a 3.5 mm audio output jack for connecting several speakers together, and a mini-USB port for charging and audio input/output combined. The Scosche boomCAN speaker comes with a multi-use cable that includes a USB for charging the speaker's built-in battery and a 3.5mm for connecting to your smartphone, media player or tablet. The USB cable can only charge the speaker as it doesn't output audio.

The aluminum housing of the Scosche boomCAN speaker is very strong, and the speaker looks like it can certainly takes some beating in your backpack or purse. The bottom of the speaker has rubber padding to prevent it from slipping on a flat surface. There is also a volume button on the bottom to toggle three volume settings.

Sound Quality and Volume

We tested several portable mini speakers, and found that the Scosche boomCAN was better than many thanks to good sound quality and reasonably loud volume. The 2.5W speaker doesn't beat out the 3W Cyber Snipa Sonar mini speaker in sound quality and volume, but it gets the job done. Audio coming from smartphones or tablets have noticeably improved when playing through the Scosche speaker, in both volume and depth of the sound, but we did noticed some distortions when volume was turned to high when working with certain devices.

The Scosche boomCAN speaker also adds noticeable bass power in certain songs or movie scene with heavy FX, though the bass was not as powerful as the Sonar portable speaker. The Scosche boomCAN speaker kept the audio integrity mostly intact when working with most devices we tested including the iPhone 4S, HTC Sensation, Samsung Galaxy S II and the iPad 2. Audio was clear enough with spacious quality and good amplification. We did experience some distortions when working with Sony Tablet S and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer when we turned the volume to high.

As with the Sonar speaker, you can link several Scosche boomCAN speakers together to provide even louder sound and more dynamic. Use the 3.5mm audio jack on the front to link several mini speakers.

What's in the box

The Scosche boomCAN portable mini speaker comes with a soft carrying pouch, an USB charging/audio input/output combo cable and a printed instruction guide. The Scosche boomCAN has a built-in Lithium-Ion battery that's 300mAh in capacity. The battery takes about 2.5 hours to charge and can play 4-7 hours of playback time.

Conclusion

For those who want to share their music, phone calls, video chats and movies with others on their phone or tablet, the Scosche boomCAN portable mini speaker offers the external audio option and it's extremely small and portable. The 3.5mm audio cable is quite long and convenient to use with anything that has 3.5mm out jack. The speaker has good volume, depth and decent bass when working with most smartphones and tablets, though has some audio distortions with a couple of devices.